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Thought Leading Research for the Wireless IndustryMon, 22 Oct 2018 02:07:37 +0000enhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8SRG launches new bloghttp://signalsresearch.com/blog/srg-launches-new-blog/
Wed, 11 Jul 2018 18:00:57 +0000http://signalsresearch.com/?p=7682Signals Research Group is starting a new blog, to record our thoughts and insights on an ongoing basis. Check back soon for new entries.
]]>AT&T using Samsung 5G gear in South Bend trialhttp://signalsresearch.com/news/att-using-samsung-5g-gear-in-south-bend-trial/
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 15:12:17 +0000http://signalsresearch.com/?p=7652FierceWireless

Monica AllevenJuly 2, 2018

Samsung is supporting AT&T’s fixed wireless 5G trial in South Bend, Indiana, where the operator is using Samsung 5G home routers, radio access units and a foundation built on Samsung’s 5G RFIC chipset, virtualized core and vRAN.

AT&T’s Melissa Arnoldi, president, AT&T Technology & Solutions, posted a blog on Wednesday about the trial in South Bend, highlighting the experience of the Rubbelke family. As 5G trial participants, the family has seen peak wireless speeds nearing 1 Gbps and latency rates less than 20 milliseconds, allowing them to download textbooks in an instant and connect over video chat without noticeable buffering.

Arnoldi didn’t mention any equipment vendors in the blog, but Samsung provided an update via email on its work in South Bend.

AT&T also likes to boast about its vast fiber footprint. AT&T also launched its ultra-fast internet service in South Bend via AT&T Fiber.

“South Bend is a great example of the power of connectivity for spurring growth and economic development,” said Bill Soards, president of AT&T Indiana, in a press release. “Our fiber expansions across the nation will help allow AT&T to achieve its plans to be the first U.S. carrier to provide mobile 5G service, which we plan to begin introducing in 12 cities by the end of this year… We’re thrilled South Bend was chosen as one of four cities nationwide where AT&T is currently doing a fixed 5G trial.”

Last year, AT&T said it was working with Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia and Intel to expand its fixed wireless 5G trials to three more cities, including South Bend; Waco, Texas; and Kalamazoo, Michigan. The operator intends to be the first U.S. carrier to deploy mobile 5G to customers in a dozen cities, including parts of Dallas, Atlanta and Waco, this year.

Samsung is also working with Verizon, having secured the spot as 5G infrastructure provider for the Sacramento, California, market. Both Verizon and Samsung executives have said their millimeter wave deployments turned out better than they had expected, delivering signals without line of sight by bouncing off trees and other obstacles and into buildings.

Signals Research Group (SRG) conducted a study earlier this year in Houston, Texas, in what was believed to be the industry’s first independent benchmark study of a 5G commercial test network. The analysts said Verizon Wireless has a 28 GHz trial network there using Samsung infrastructure.

Based on numerous walk tests and stationary tests involving line-of-sight (LOS), non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and near-line-of-sight conditions, the SRG analysts found that millimeter wave signals are far more resilient than they expected, even at distances exceeding several thousand feet. Tree foliage, passing school buses, buildings, parked cars and glass impacted the received signals, but the resultant signals were still capable of delivering meaningful data rates, thanks in part of a 400 MHz radio channel.

The 3GPP officially completed the Standalone (SA) version of the 5G New Radio (NR) standard at a meeting in La Jolla, California, this week, marking a long-awaited target date for the standard.

The Non-Standalone (NSA) version of the standard was approved in December 2017. The NSA part of the standard leverages the legacy LTE core network while the SA portion provides for independent deployment.

In a collective announcement, the group said more than 600 delegates from operators, network, terminals and chipset vendors, internet companies and other vertical industry companies witnessed “this historic moment for 5G.”

“The freeze of Standalone 5G NR radio specifications represents a major milestone in the quest of the wireless industry towards realizing the holistic 5G vision,” said Balázs Bertényi, chairman of 3GPP TSG RAN, in a statement. “5G NR Standalone systems not only dramatically increase the mobile broadband speeds and capacity, but also open the door for new industries beyond telecommunications that are looking to revolutionize their ecosystem through 5G.”

Erik Guttman, chairman of 3GPP TSG SA, agreed completion of the stage 3 freeze milestone for the 5G standalone system has great significance. “The 5G System specification has now reached its official stage of completion, thanks to the intense efforts of hundreds of engineers over the past three years,” he said. “A special acknowledgment is due to those who led this remarkable effort in diverse committees.”

Not to pull the wind out of anybody’s sails, but there’s still more work to be done. In a research note, SRG Research and Consulting Services noted that while it is partially correct to say that Option 2 and Option 3 of the standards are “finished,” it is not correct to say Release 15 is finished, and “it’s clearly not correct to say that work on 5G is finished.”

Despite all the work that has been completed up to this point, the devil is in the details. “We believe some RAN working groups will spend much of the remaining year addressing known gaps in the specifications, not to mention fixing things that member companies identify in the coming months,” SGR said.

]]>AT&T: We are definitely interested in both NSA and SAhttp://signalsresearch.com/news/att-we-are-definitely-interested-in-both-nsa-and-sa/
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 13:54:04 +0000http://signalsresearch.com/?p=7640FierceWireless

Monica AllevenJune 14, 2018

While it’s unclear exactly when U.S. operators will deploy the Standalone (SA) version of the 5G standard that the 3GPP officially finalized this week, AT&T, for one, is interested in both the Non-Standalone (NSA) version that most operators are expected to deploy initially, as well as the SA version.

“AT&T’s announced deployments will use the NSA architecture and standards to enable tight integration and smooth interworking between LTE and NR. As the capabilities of 5G devices and the 5G-Next Generation Core (5G-NGC) become more advanced, we will continue to evaluate NSA and SA configurations and deploy those that best support the enhanced mobile and fixed wireless broadband experience for our customers,” he said.

“We’re committed to deploying 5G technologies to transform the wireless experience for our customers,” he added. “The initial NSA option 3 defined as part of this week’s Release 15 completion uses LTE and the EPC, and provides the fastest way for us to deploy NR and provide enhanced mobile broadband services to our customers.”

Of course, this being AT&T, virtualization comes into play. “Further NSA options to be completed this December will continue using LTE and introduce the 5G-NGC,” Kafka said. “Over time, virtualization enables deploying a network that can support multiple options. We are looking at NSA and SA options for our network to use additional capabilities and use cases offered by NR and the 5G-NGC.”

In the U.S., nationwide operators are in various stages of rolling out their versions of 5G. Since the NSA standard uses the legacy LTE core network along with the LTE air interface to augment the 5G radio channel, it was the first to be completed in the standards process and the first to get rolled out.

Verizon declined to comment on its future plans for SA. T-Mobile also wasn’t sharing details about its SA plans.

Sprint said it will launch its mobile 5G network using its 2.5 GHz spectrum (n41) and the NSA 5G NR specification. “SA 5G NR is part of the company’s long-term roadmap, and Sprint is working with its suppliers for end-to-end availability of SA 5G NR,” the company said.

As for SA deployments in the nearer term, Michael Thelander, president and founder of SRG Research and Consulting Services, said China Mobile is the only operator he’s aware of that has expressed interest in SA for its initial 5G deployments. U.S. operators will take interim steps before they make the leap to SA, he said.

Intel’s Asha Keddy, vice president of Mobile and Communications Group and general manager, Standards and Advanced Technology, said Intel expects SA precommercial technical trials to be active globally by the fourth quarter of 2018 and to continue into 2019 with increasing maturity.

“And while we expect much of the industry will commence commercial operations with NSA deployments, interest in SA will remain significant including with Chinese operators. Ultimately we expect many operators to migrate to this configuration,” she said.

A new report from Strategy Analytics predicts that a combined T-Mobile US and Sprint will result in a 17 percent surge in the uptake of 5G services by 2023. That increase would come from having three similar-sized competitors in the market having to invest more in their networks to remain competitive.

“With the merger, the new company would be better positioned for a convergence play, growth in automotive, and other high mobility/broad coverage 5G use cases, with new strength in wholesale and enterprise and positioning for network-as-a-service (NaaS) with 5G network slicing,” said Strategy Analytics Director Susan Welsh de Grimaldo as part of the report.

The report touts that a merged entity will outperform the individual operations by nearly 1 percentage point in market share of gross additions, 0.5 percentage point in subscription market share, and 0.4 percentage point in revenue market share.

T-Mobile US late last month finally made an official offer for Sprint. The companies positioned the deal as being a necessary step for 5G, with management from both companies touting their combined ability to roll out a broader and more robust network. The two companies said that they plan to invest up to $40 billion in a new 5G network.

T-Mobile US CEO John Legere has stated that if the deal is approved, the combined entity would continue to be “pro consumer, and that means lower prices, better service, and more choices to more consumers in every corner of the country.”

But it would appear that the cost savings to consumers would likely come from the combined entity entering new market segments like home video to compete against incumbent cable television providers and not necessarily strictly from the more traditional cellular market.

“The faster 5G deployment and adoption will be the main merger benefit for U.S. consumers, though everything comes at a cost,” Kendall noted. “Operators in three-player markets enjoy EBITDA margins 3-4 percentage points higher than those in four-player markets so a merger on this scale may weaken price competition and increase operator profits.”

Don’t Forget the Core
Some analysts are also worried that focus on the merger will stop both T-Mobile US and Sprint from investing in their 5G core network, which is critical to operations.

“Being first to market with 5G is helped by accelerating the allocation of more mid-band spectrum and by relaxing regulations that delay new network rollouts,” said Michael Thelander, analyst with Signals Research Group, in a research note. “Getting the 5G core network in place is also critical, and the merger could delay this activity for the new T-Mobile.”

Günther Ottendorfer, former chief operating officer of technology at Sprint, last year noted that the carrier had spent a couple of years deploying its OpenStack cloud-based NFV platform. He explained the deployment has been “an essential building block” as the carrier builds toward its 5G network.

“For the last two years, we have been trying to educate the whole team on how important it is,” Ottendorfer said during the 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas event, referring to its NFV work. “It’s not a question of whether we do it, but when we shift the platform, and that’s working itself out.”

As part of a blog post, Ottendorfer explained Sprint has been building a virtual core to replace standalone, bare metal platforms with a single NFV infrastructure (NFVI). This virtual core houses the carrier’s virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC) and IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) as virtualized network functions (VNFs).

The Jacobs name is synonymous with Qualcomm. Irwin Jacobs founded the company, and his son Paul was CEO for more than a decade.

And now there’s a chance—however small—that a Jacobs could return to try to save the company from its current problems. Specifically, Paul Jacobs left Qualcomm’s board and is now reportedly in the process of lining up financing to take control of Qualcomm and then take it private.

Can Paul save Qualcomm? It’s a long shot, according to analysts.

A number of veteran wireless analysts suggested that Jacobs’ bid, which was reported last month by Bloomberg, may not be able to overcome Qualcomm’s huge price tag. They suspect Jacobs and his investors will be unwilling to load up on the debt needed to pull the transaction off. “My guess is that it will fall short just because it’s an enormous amount of money to raise,” said Avi Greengart, GlobalData’s research director for consumer platforms and devices.

Under the surface, however, the changes in the mobile industry since Qualcomm’s heyday may be just as big an obstacle.

Reuniting the band
The Jacobs name carries plenty of weight in the wireless industry. After all, it’s the family that helped create the GSM/CDMA split. So, it’s not a surprise that the return of the Jacobs family to Qualcomm is an enticing prospect. “It reminds me of the scene in the ‘The Blues Brothers’ when they get out of jail and say that they are going to get the band back together,” said Michael Thelander, the president and founder of Signals Research Group. “Back in the day they … did a lot of visionary things. Paul was a part of it. Getting back into that mindset would be interesting.” Thelander doubts that Jacobs will succeed, however.

One analyst pointed out that, unlike Michael Dell’s successful takeover of the company that bears his name, Jacobs lacks significant equity in Qualcomm on which to mount his bid. A report at Financial Times said that Jacobs is trying to secure commitments for as much as $100 billion.

Beyond the high financial barrier, analysts suggest that today’s Qualcomm faces a much different industry than the one led by Irwin and Paul. After all, Qualcomm’s traditional strategy has been to play the long game and invest in projects that don’t have definitive and short-term paths to reward. That may have worked in the 1990s, when the cell phone industry was just getting started, but today’s smartphone market is saturated, 4G has not greatly increased average revenue per user, and emerging technologies such as the IoT, though exciting and clearly promising, have not proven to be reliable revenue generators. The next great revenue stream has not yet been identified.

In other words, why would investors get excited about IoT-based healthcare or virtual reality, as cool and useful as they may be, if it is not clear that either will pay off?

Wall Street woes
This suggests that the company could come under pressure from Wall Street to jettison noncore elements. Joe Madden, founder of research firm Mobile Experts, said the company is vulnerable because there are lots of areas that can be cut without impacting operations or revenue streams. Wall Street likes that, but the question is whether Jacobs would go to the trouble and expense of taking over Qualcomm just to implement a strategy he probably wouldn’t like. Madden said that the company must “trim down” in order to be less vulnerable, so such moves may be necessary even if Jacobs’ plan is to take the company private and avoid Wall Street.

Jacobs could not be reached for comment for this story. The analysts said that they did not have any insight into the direction he would take the company if he did gain control.

Though it seems unlikely, the return of a Jacobs to the helm of Qualcomm would be meaningful. “I think it actually matters, not just [because of] the name,” GlobalData’s Greengart said. “He has run the business and understands the technology as well. This is both a technology management issue and business management issue. I think it’s a bit of a confidence issue if you work for Qualcomm and invest in these long-term research efforts. You want to know that the company is valuing those efforts, and people trust Paul.”

Madden called working through the bigger issues “gut wrenching.” And it’s not unique to Qualcomm: How do innovative companies deal with an industry that is growing far less dramatically than it did a couple of decades ago? “Should we continue to do groundbreaking work on new things or should we focus on deriving new products from the technology we have already, to focus on profitability?” Madden asked rhetorically about Qualcomm’s dilemma. “That’s the culture shock Qualcomm is going through now. It’s struggling to make the decision institutionally.”

The bottom line is that Jacobs’ play for Qualcomm is tenuous because, even if he gains control of Qualcomm, he may want to pursue a strategy that doesn’t match today’s reality. And that could turn off possible investors. “Any plan to take over Qualcomm and to continue spending on futuristic R&D projects would an uphill battle right now,” Madden noted.

It’s clear from the tone that T-Mobile’s executive team took with investors during the company’s first quarter earnings call this week that they plan to overcome any skepticism about the company’s proposed acquisition of Sprint by appealing to the Trump Administration’s fears that China may be taking a lead over the U.S. in technology and innovation.

In his opening remarks to investors, T-Mobile CEO John Legere emphasized this strategy: “Once regulators learn, they will agree this is the right move at the right time for America.”

Legere also noted that while T-Mobile can still build a 5G network without acquiring Sprint, that network will not be as powerful, nor have the “depth and breadth” of 5G coverage that the combined 5G network will have. He added that the combined network “will change the country’s competitiveness in 5G.”

T-Mobile’s executive team has been on a fast-paced trip to Washington, D.C. Legere said on the call Tuesday afternoon that since the deal was announced Sunday they had already had meetings with the FCC and other government officials and were planning to meet with the Department of Justice before the trip was over.

At least one top government official had a positive reaction to the deal. Reuters reported that U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC that he believes the proposed deal is interesting and “it would propel Verizon and AT&T into more active pursuit of 5G,” noting that the U.S. needs this 5G network for defense and commercial purposes.

Bundled Plan
Interestingly, it sounds as if T-Mobile’s bigger strategy beyond just deploying a nationwide 5G mobile network is to offer a bundled plan to consumers that combines broadband, TV, and wireless service. T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert said that the combined entity would be able to offer nationwide speeds of 450 Mb/s, making it an effective home broadband competitor. He also noted that T-Mobile’s recent acquisition of Layer3 TV sets it up to deliver content.

But T-Mobile executives seem acutely aware that they have a challenge ahead. Particularly when it comes to convincing investors that this deal will result in operating efficiencies while at the same time job creation. Sievert said that the new T-Mobile will employ more people from day one. And it will do so because even though the merged company will eliminate redundant retail stores, it will also open more stores, particularly in rural areas where neither company currently has retail outlets. And it will also employ more people in the remaining stores to address the larger customer base that will result from combining the two companies.

But Don’t Forget the Core
While T-Mobile executives are busy touting the importance of creating a nationwide 5G network that has extensive coverage and capacity, some analysts are worried that all this focus on the merger will stop both T-Mobile and Sprint from investing in their 5G core network, which is critical to operations.

The merger is supposed to be approved no later than early 2019, but that still means a lot of prep work needs to be done now for that 5G network to work in 2019.

“Being first to market with 5G is helped by accelerating the allocation of more mid-band spectrum and by relaxing regulations that delay new network rollouts,” said Michael Thelander, analyst with Signals Research Group, in a research note. “Getting the 5G core network in place is also critical, and the merger could delay this activity for the new T-Mobile.”

Millimeter wave signals were more found to be more robust than expected and provided high speeds — although not gigabit speeds — at distances of several thousand feet from a node, Signals Research Group found in recent testing of Verizon’s 28 GHz fixed wireless access network in Houston.

“Millimeter wave signals are far more resilient than we expected, even at distances exceeding several thousand feet. Tree foliage, passing school buses, buildings, glass, and parked cars impacted the received signal, but the resultant signals were still capable of delivering meaningful data rates,” SRG concluded.

SRG believes the testing is the first independent industry testing of a 5G millimeter-wave network. In Houston, Verizon is using Samsung equipment and the 5G Technical Forum standard which was developed outside of 3GPP through the 5G TF group. (The carrier has said that it plans to migrate 5G TF to 5G New Radio.) SRG noted that “although the 5GTF specifications are not compatible with the 3GPP specifications, we believe the differences have immaterial impact on the metrics that we analyzed.” Analyst Emil Olbrich, who worked on the SRG testing, told RCR Wireless News that the testing focused more on performance of millimeter wave than on 5G NR-specific characteristics.

“As an engineer, I went in extremely skeptical of millimeter wave. I did not think, from a technical perspective, it was going to be very usable,” Olbrich said. “I came away very impressed, though.” He said that at a distance of about 4,000 feet, SRG was “still getting good numbers that could give you good data rates.”

SRG conducted stationary and walk-testing with a Rohde & Schwarz TSME drive-test scanner and omni-directional and horn antennas. With both antennas, SRG said, it “tested at distances that greatly exceeded operator public statements that we’ve heard.” However, even though data rates were very good in many locations — on the order of 300 Mbps to 500 Mbps — that doesn’t quite live up to Verizon’s intent to provide gigabit speeds, Olbrich noted. SRG concluded that “promising gigabit data speeds to all homes may prove to be challenging, especially in the near-term.”

SRG outlined its test methodology — including a few experiments to explore how well millimeter wave signals could be received in tricky, non-line-of-sight scenarios — in this video. Olbrich said that testing 5G networks in the field is a much different experience than testing LTE networks.

“How we test and measure in the field is going to look very different than what we did in the past,” he said. “There’ll be some similarities — the metrics and KPIs will be similar — but now we’re looking at individual beams and how they’re manipulated in the network, and how much data is given to each user, and how you can re-use signals from the same sector in different beams. … It’s a new experience for those testing it like ourselves.”

]]>Why Companies and Countries Are Battling for Ascendancy in 5Ghttp://signalsresearch.com/news/why-companies-and-countries-are-battling-for-ascendancy-in-5g/
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 14:05:10 +0000http://signalsresearch.com/?p=7644New York Times

Don Clark and Cecilia KangMarch 6, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO — Being at the forefront of a new technology often provides a strategic advantage. That helps explain why there is so much scrapping now by companies and countries over a next wave of wireless technology known as 5G.

5G is shorthand for fifth-generation wireless technology, and it essentially brings ultrafast wireless speeds to people. By sending billions of bits of data per second, up from peaks of hundreds of millions today, 5G could cut the time to download a movie to seconds. Other 5G features would allow autonomous cars and industrial equipment to reliably exchange short bursts of data at blinding speed.

Technology companies including Qualcomm, Intel and China’s Huawei have been working on developing 5G technology and standards. But even with 5G still in its infancy, the United States government underscored its importance with an unprecedented move this week to intervene in Broadcom’s $117 billion bid for Qualcomm.

In a letter on Monday, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States said it would investigate the proposed deal, partly because it was concerned that if Broadcom bought Qualcomm, it would weaken Qualcomm and “leave an opening for China to expand its influence on the 5G standard-setting process.”

Broadcom, which is based in Singapore but is planning a move to the United States, swiftly rejected the idea that it would push 5G development less aggressively. “There can be no question that an American Broadcom-Qualcomm combination will provide far more resources for investments and development to that end,” a Broadcom spokesman said.

Companies still have room to influence 5G technology because it has not yet been deployed. As of now, a group called 3GPP — staffed by engineers from many companies — has been defining the specifications so that devices that operate with 5G technology can “talk” to one another. The group delivered its first major set of standards in December.

Mike Thelander, an analyst with Signals Research Group, predicted that American carriers will have some 5G services operating in late 2018 but that smartphones that use the technology won’t be ready until 2019.

Qualcomm has long been one of the most active contributors of cellular technology, playing a particularly influential role in 3G technology as well as current 4G networks. Yet the effort to develop 5G standards has brought many new players to the fore, including Huawei, a relative newcomer to the field.

Analysts with Signals Research Group (SRG) who studied Verizon’s 28 GHz system in Houston say they came away with a great appreciation of the promises of millimeter wave spectrum. It’s not a panacea for all the world’s fixed and mobile broadband needs, but they walked away pretty stoked about the prospects for 5G millimeter wave systems.

The analysts just released an executive summary of a new report that chronicles their study in Houston, accompanied by a video of their escapades. The tests were done the last week of January and used a drive test scanner from Rhode & Schwarz to collect performance metrics.

They found that millimeter wave signals are far more resilient than expected, even at distances exceeding several thousand feet. Tree foliage, passing school buses, buildings, glass and parked cars impacted the received signal, but the resultant signals were still capable of delivering meaningful data rates. However, they say that promising Gigabit data speeds to all homes may prove to be challenging, especially in the near term.

The study comes as Verizon prepares to commercially launch a 5G-based fixed wireless service this year. SRG tested two Verizon 5G Technical Forum (5GTF) cell sites with each cell site supporting two sectors. These 5G cell sites were located about 1,400 feet from each other and were macro sites, which the analysts found a bit surprising since small cells are typically associated with 5G millimeter wave deployments.

Samsung is the infrastructure supplier for Verizon in the Houston market and the analysts said they believe the trial network in Houston is now supporting commercial traffic. They also said they believe it’s the industry’s first independent network benchmark study of a 5G commercial test network.

Based on numerous walk tests and stationary tests involving line-of-sight, non-line-of-sight and near-line-of-sight conditions, they found that millimeter wave signals are far more resilient than expected, even at distances of more than several thousand feet. “Who would have thought a millimeter wave signal in an area 100% blocked from the serving cell tower by the surroundings would still be capable of supporting good data speeds?,” the report states.

There is one thing they do not buy, however. Verizon management is on record for promising Gigabit speeds to its serviced customers, but “we don’t share this view with near-term deployments unless Verizon aggressively deploys 5GTF small cells (i.e., brings the consumer and the 5G access point closer together), and/or mounts CPEs in ideal exterior locations, and/or limits its customers to only those customers that it knows live in a location with suitable radio conditions that can support Gigabit speeds,” the analysts said.

“If the goal is to deliver downlink/uplink broadband speeds that exceed what most US consumers can get today from their fixed line service provider, then it is a slam dunk—especially when limited to regions that Verizon is likely targeting with its forthcoming offering,” SRG said. “However, if consumer expectations are for reliable Gigabit-per-second speeds then someone(s) is going to walk away disappointed.”

Verizon’s Chief Engineer and Head of Wireless Networks Nicola Palmer said last year that she and her team were finding that millimeter wave propagates a little better than they thought it would in terms of line of sight and elevation. Their tests showed they were able to get up as high as the 19th floors of a building and they were also seeing speeds in and above the 1 gigabit-per-second range beyond 2,000 feet. Those type of findings were based on Verizon’s trials with non-paying customers in 11 markets at the time.

SRG also noted that while Verizon is currently using the 5GTF specification, they believe the data they collected and the results concluded from their analysis are equally applicable to the industry-defined 3GPP 5G NR specifications.